TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

The First Standard: The EBU Code

In 1971, in the face of the audiovisual industry’s need for economic viability and of the evolution of transfer technologies, a working group of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)^[7] carried out research into the “projet d’un code pour l’enregistrement de repères temporels sur film image et bande-son lors des prises de vues avec son synchrone sans câble.”^[8] Following various studies, in 1976 the organization published a report^[9] which defined the modes of inscribing a time code on film (seconds, minutes, hours, months) using a binary decimal system (8 bits).